David Brooks: Been There. Done That.

For a little while in my teenage years, my friends and I read David Brooks columns. It was fun. I have some fond memories of us all being uninformed and feeling superior together. I think those moments of uninhibited self-righteousness deepened our friendships.

But then we all sort of moved away from it. I don’t remember any big group decision that we should give up reading David Brooks. It just sort of petered out, and, before long, we were scarcely reading him.

We didn’t give it up for the obvious reasons: that his ideas were repetitive and self-evident; that citing a Brooks column at a dinner party is a good way to get yourself mocked; that young people who read Brooks go on to join the College Republicans and perform patronizing monologues about “elitism” that are themselves elitist.

I think we gave it up, first, because we each had had a few embarrassing incidents. People who read Brooks do stupid things (that’s basically the point). I read his column one day during lunch and then had to give a presentation in Economics class. I stumbled through it, incapable of putting together simple ideas, feeling like a total loser. It is still one of those embarrassing memories that pop up unbidden at 4 in the morning.

We gave it up, second, I think, because one member of our clique became a full-on “moderate Brooks-style Republican.” He may have been the smartest of us, but something sad happened to him as he sunk deeper into hypocritical, moralizing life.

Third, most of us developed higher pleasures. Brooks was fun, for a bit, but it was kind of repetitive. Most of us figured out early on that Brooks doesn’t really make you more informed or more aware (academic studies more or less confirm this). We graduated to more satisfying pleasures. The deeper sources of happiness usually involve Gail Collins or Paul Krugman, learning more about something instead of reading the same fundamentally incorrect analysis about the liberal mindset, and experiencing a sense of the realities of contemporary political thought.

One close friend devoted himself to Nick Kristof. Others fell deeply in love and got thrills from picking apart Brooks’s arguments with significant others. A few developed passions for actual political science.

Finally, I think we had a vague sense that reading David Brooks was not exactly something you were proud of yourself for. It’s not something people admire. We were in the stage, which I guess all of us are still in, of trying to become more integrated, coherent and responsible people. This process usually involves using the powers of reason, temperance and self-control—not qualities one associates with taking David Brooks at face value.

I think we had a sense, which all people have, or should have, that the actions you take change you inside, making you a little more or a little less coherent. Not reading Brooks, or only reading Brooks sporadically in order to criticize him, gave you a better shot at becoming a little more integrated and interesting. Reading Brooks all the time seemed likely to cumulatively fragment a person’s deep center, or at least not do much to enhance it.

So, like the vast majority of people who read Brooks, we aged out. We left our copies of Bobos in Paradise behind. I don’t have any problem with somebody who reads him from time to time, but I guess, on the whole, I think being really into Brooks is not a particularly uplifting form of pleasure and should be discouraged more than encouraged.

We now have a couple places—Bethesda and certain areas of Brooklyn—that have gone into the business of effectively encouraging reading Brooks. By making Brooks acceptable, they are creating a situation in which his readership will increase substantially. One RAND study suggests that readership could skyrocket by up to 90 percent, before college and such. As readership rises and paywall obstructions go away, his output is bound to increase. This is simple economics, and it is confirmed by much research. Bethesda and certain areas of Brooklyn, in other words, are producing more readers.

The people who debate these changes usually cite the social risks readers would face or the book sales the Brooks might realize. Many people these days shy away from talk about the moral status of reading David Brooks, because that would imply that one sort of life you might choose is better than another sort of life.

But, of course, these are the core questions: public intellectuals profoundly mold culture, so what sort of community do we want our public intellectuals to nurture? What sort of individuals and behaviors do our governments want to encourage? I’d say that in healthy societies, the publishing industry wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing reading habits. In those societies, the publishing industry subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying columnists who occasionally have new ideas about stuff, and discourages lesser pleasures, like reading about “conspicuous consumption” and “yuppies.”

In reading Brooks, citizens of Bethesda and certain parts of Brooklyn are, indeed, enhancing lazy thinking. But they are also nurturing a moral ecology in which it is a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be.